Thomas wrote: ..... America did a great job pursuing its objectives by setting up international institutions and working through them -- under presidents of both parties. A lot of bad things can be said about these institutions -- as you point out, it is always easy to criticize those who do something -- but they have brought an unprecedented level of peace and prosperity to this world. They have proven that international politics can work to the advantage of everyone involved. And that's why I get pissed off when governments like mine and yours start to pursue a policy that rules only apply if the government wants them to apply. Neither Schroeder nor Bush are aggressive pursuers of their countries' own good. They just play them on TV
I agree with this, however, I also believe that we had not fully thought through the inescapable effects of adding more and more countries, operating at lower and lower levels of political development to those international institutions. That, coupled with lassitude and a preference for inaction on the part of the advanced countries, brought the potential for serious trouble. This unfortunate outcome has indeed occurred. We must now deal with it, or let the advanced countries sink towards the average levels that now prevail in these vaunted international institutions.
Thomas wrote:
I guess it depends from which country you're looking at it. I'd say my own country's experience is that it was Wilhelm II's pre-1914 aggressive approach that led to great misery. By countrast, Germany's post-1949 approach of what you call inaction, paired with multilateral formalisms was highly successful, however boring.
I prefer boring, bureaucratic foreign policy to the aggressive kind. And I suspect this is basically a difference of taste between you and me on which we can just agree to disagree.
I do believe that Germany's post 1949 policies, both political and economic, have been models of intelligent and principled national behavior under extraordinary circumstances. It would be difficult to find better examples in history. While it is true that historical necessity compelled Germany to operate within international structures, principally NATO and the evolving European Community, it is not accurate to suggest that Germany's role in them was merely bureaucratic and passive. (Perhaps Wilhelm would have found them so, but I doubt that one as wise as Bismark would). Germany emerged as the economic leader in Europe, the major political force in the heart of Europe, and with the willing assent of her neighbors (and some help from the U.S.A.) for her reunification at a particularly turbulent moment in history. Moreover Germany has dealt with the many expected and unexpected problems of modernizing formerly Socialist states in a rational way that is no doubt instructive in the now expanded community of Europe.
However Europe is not the world. Not all European solutions will work in the wider and more diverse contests that now beset the world community. Happily there are no Mugabwes or Saddams in Europe today. We have already seen that preferred European methods were quite ineffective in dealing with similar figures who did emerge during the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia. It took real pressure from America to spur the Europeans into needed action, and even that came two years too late for thousands of Bosnians.
The western world is now faced with a serious challenge from the Moslem world that has suddenly awakened to its relative backwardness. This has spawned a reactionary Islamist movement that seeks to end it's discomfort with illusory attempts to recreate past glories, and attack its western exploiters and infidels who would induce an undesireable (to them) modernism into their lives.. To a very large degree this is a reaction to centuries of conflict and exploitation at the hands of European powers, chiefly the UK and France. (It is currently fashionable to deny this and point only to excessive U.S. support of Israel as the cause. Certainly that is a factor - but even this is a problem whose origins are in Europe - and I mean all of Europe, including France and the UK in particular.) I have seen damn little constructive strategy or action for dealing with this major problem coming from Europeans. Instead we get only obfucation and unsolicited criticism for our actions, such as they are.